360 People Make Public Vow to Resist Taxes for Vietnam War

360 Refuse To Pay Tax On Income

New York (UPI) — At least 360 persons, including a Nobel Prize winner, a leading
folk-singer, and a controversial Yale professor, have refused to pay all or
part of their federal income taxes for 1965 in
protest to “illegal use” of
U.S. forces in
such areas as Viet Nam and the Dominican Republic.

A statement issued by the group said some of the protestors will leave their
tax money in banks where it can be seized by the Internal Revenue Service.
Others, it said, will contribute the money to charities.

The Federal Revenue Code provides for jail sentences of up to one year and
fines as high as $10,000 for conviction of willful refusal to pay federal
income taxes.

Among the protestors who signed the statement were
Prof. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi,
nobel prize-winning bio-chemist; folk singer Joan Baez;
Prof. Staughton Lynd of
Yale, who made an unauthorized trip to Viet Nam last December; veteran
pacifist the Rev. A.J.
Muste; Helen Merrell Lynd; co-author of “Middletown;[”] poet Lawrence
Ferlinghetti; publisher Lyle Stuart;
Prof. William Davidon of
Haverford College; Prof.
Carroll C. Pratt of Rider College; editor Dorothy Day of The Catholic Worker,
and Prof. John M. Vickers
of the University of Illinois.

A version of the same story in
The Milwaukee Journal has some minor wording
changes, lists CARE and
UNICEF as two of the charities some of the
resisters are redirecting their taxes to, notes that “Almost every state in
the union is represented in the group,” and adds a couple of paragraphs about
Wisconsin resisters:

Dr. Carl M. Kline, a Wausau
psychiatrist who formerly practiced in Milwaukee, was one of the signers. He
said: “I am just going to refuse to pay a part of it, and I will leave that
money in my bank account. I realize you can’t beat this thing, but it is a
matter of expressing my feelings. I am a Quaker, and I am against war
altogether, but I feel particularly that our action in Vietnam is wrong, and
this is my way of protesting. I wish I could do more.”

Another Wisconsin signer was Kenneth Knudson, of Madison. Knudson picketed
the Madison internal revenue office in 1964 and
1965 to protest use of federal funds for
military purposes.

That article also adds this detail:

Miss Baez earlier had refused to pay 60% of her
1964 federal income tax to protest government
expenditures for armament. The internal revenue service collected more than
$34,000 from her after attaching a lien to her income and property.

Most of the article concerns the “show me the law”-style tax protesters — folks like Charles Rielly, Paul A. Hein
Jr., Irwin Schiff, Gordon S.
Buttorff, Charles A. Dodge, and Alton Moss — and their various arguments and
techniques. But there is also some mention of war tax resisters:

On March 14, Brandeis University professor
Paul Monsky was convicted on tax evasion charges in
U.S. District
Court in Boston. The 43-year-old math teacher did not pay taxes for six
years to protest military spending. It took a jury less than two hours to
decide Monsky was guilty of defrauding the government by claiming 42
exemptions, even though he attached explanations on his tax forms.

He faces a possible $500 fine and a one-year prison term when sentenced.

Bruce Chrisman, a Mennonite pacifist from Ava,
Ill., made the same claim
on his 1975 return and received a similar
verdict last
Dec. 3.

Chrisman, an organic truck farmer who grows alfalfa sprouts, maintained his
conscience as a Christian pacifist prohibits him from supporting killing,
even indirectly through taxes to finance the military.

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